Ghosts, Mansions and Design: Oh My!

In an earlier blog written in October, I mentioned how design is both a verb and a lifestyle: We are able to both do it and live it. I demonstrated this by writing about our campus’s social sciences and humanities building, otherwise known as the “Deathstar”—a concrete building that serves as a labyrinth to students and teachers alike. As I come across various forms of architecture in my life, such as the Deathstar mentioned earlier, I find that this concept of design being both a verb and a lifestyle still applies to many buildings. My most recent discovery of this is the famous Winchester Mystery House.

Being a legendary mansion in the San Jose area, the Winchester Mystery House is known for being the old home of a rich widow by the name of Sarah Winchester. Although the building stands as a landmark of beautiful and extravagant architecture, it also serves as a reminder of how crucial design is in the lives of many—particular in the life of Sarah as she continuously constructed the house to drive spirits away that she believed to be haunting them.

Sarah Winchester was the wife of a gun entrepreneur, William Wirt Winchester, who came to fame as the creator of the Winchester rifles. But after his death, as well as the death of their only daughter, Sarah came to believe that her family was cursed and haunted by those killed by the rifles that her husband created. As a result, vengeful spirits were the ones who ultimately took the lives of the ones she loved most. Being very superstitious, Sarah sought help from a psychic, who ultimately told her to build a house for these spirits and to keep building it in order to please them. By never allowing the building to be finished, only then would the spirits allow Sarah to live.

Sarah immediately made design a big part of her life as she went on to continuously construct, renovate, remodel and erect new additions to her home, fearing that her life was threatened if her mansion ever came to be built completely. This construction went on for 38 years and did not stop until the day that she died.

The Winchester Mystery House reflects the design of a Victorian mansion. And having had seven floors and 160 rooms before in its lifetime, the house proves to be not only architecturally exquisite, but also fairly large. One rumor that explains the building’s enormous size is Sarah’s fears of the spirits coming after her. Fearing that they followed her throughout the house, Sarah purposely built the house like a maze with several oddities, such as twists, dead ends and trap doors so that she may throw off anyone who may try to follow her. She even slept in different rooms to assure that ghosts would not come for her.

The famous "stairs to nowhere" was just one of the
many oddities that Sarah Winchester built into her house.

The fact that one woman was so engrossed in one piece design (even though her mansion had no master plan or blue print to follow) demonstrates how design can fit into the meanings of both a verb and a lifestyle. What appeared to be one woman’s way of living and escaping death now serves as a national landmark in California and one of the greatest architectural pieces ever known. Spooky, isn’t it?